Anabolic Diet: Review by Steve Holman, IRONMAN Aug '96

Eat more fat and your body is forced to burn more fat, including bodyfat. This sounds logical, and Mauro G. Di Pasquale, M.D., explains why in his book The Anabolic Diet.

Di Pasquale, who’s the publisher of the Anabolic Research Review newsletter, has been a respected member of the international sports community for the past 25 years. He knows his subject, and he backs up everything with solid research and logic.

For example, research shows that insulin can cause bodyfat deposition when your level yo-yos, as it does with a typical high-carbohydrate diet. Studies also suggest that fat is positively linked to testosterone and an anticatabolic environment. Couple that with the fact that your body will learn to burn what’s most plentiful as its primary energy source, and you have a strong case for the high-fat diet.

Don’t get the wrong idea, however. You don’t eat bacon at every meal. Di Pasquale outlines specific diets that incorporate all types of fat during the week. Then on weekends you carb up so you don’t miss the health and bodybuilding benefits of this important macronutrient. As he says, you should use the weekends as minicarb-loading cycles to “stuff the muscles with glycogen.”

I believe this diet can be effective at specific times during the year because it can help retrain your metabolism to burn more fat and force more glycogen into the muscles. Is it a lifetime eating plan? That’s debatable. While it’s hard to ignore all of the research showing the long-term detrimental effects of eating fat—everything from heart disease to cancer—it may be that eating a high-fat diet for short periods every so often is an effective way to take bodyfat off at a faster clip.

Pros: Thought-provoking information on diet and nutrition, complete with sample diets and references. It will change the way you look at fat.

Cons: Doesn’t delve into the negative research on fat enough to discount it.

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